The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not to be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Typically, flash freezing refers to the process in various industries whereby objects are frozen in a few hours by subjecting them to cryogenic temperatures, or in direct contact with dry ice (carbon dioxide) or liquid nitrogen at −196° C. (−320.8° F.). Flash (or partial) evaporation is the partial vapor that occurs when a saturated liquid stream undergoes a reduction in pressure by passing through a throttling valve or other throttling device.
It is known that mechanical agitation can be used to separate and break down organic material, such as vegetation. The agitation often occurs through at least one of the following: forcible gyratory motion, reciprocal motion, oscillating motion, centrifugal forces, shaking, scrubbing, sedimentation, sieving, stripping, and sublimation. The use of various centrifugal and mechanical separators has been proposed to perform the separation step in conjunction with a freeze process.
In the art, it is recognized that various processes may be used for extracting herbs, oils and/or other byproducts from plants and other vegetation. These processes may utilize liquids to extract the by-products through implementation of intricate processes using complex equipment, rendering the processes expensive and complicated and requiring long drying periods. An herbal extraction apparatus which expeditiously classifies various plant by-products through a dry mechanical agitation process is needed.
Other proposals have involved harvesting vegetation material byproducts through flash freezing and mechanical agitation. The problem with these gripping devices is that they do not regulate the amount of carbon dioxide used for flash freezing and the mechanical agitation forces. Also, the byproduct is not classified into discrete sizes for more efficient packaging. Even though the above cited vegetation byproduct harvesting systems meet some of the needs of the market, a vegetation material byproduct harvesting apparatus and method which expeditiously extracts vegetation and other plant byproducts from the vegetation material through a flash freezing and dry mechanical agitation process, and then selectively harvest various byproducts based on size and composition of the byproducts is still desired.